Making comparisons deals with phrases such as “the more…the more…” or “the less…the less…”.  In this section we will also discuss more than, less than, better, best, worst, and worse.  Some of this may overlap with other information found on this site.  These types of questions are typically seen 1-3 times on the grammar test and are fairly easy to recognize on the reading test.

Type 1

The phrase “the more ….the more I…” is different in French than in English.  In English we might say “The more I study the more I excel./ Plus j’étudie, plus j’excelle.”  Note that in French “the” or “le” is not used.  This applies in all of these types of constructions.

Here is the formula:

Plus_________plus________

Type 2

The next type of comparison is with plus, aussi, moins, etc. plus an adjective (big, small, faster, tall, slowly, well, etc.) and que.

Here is the formula with an example:

Plus/aussi/moins + adjective + que

Marie est plus petite que son père.

Remember that the adjective must agree in number and gender to what it is being referred to as we see with the extra e added to petite in the above example.

Type 3

This type uses plus de…que/more than, autant de…que/as much as, moins de…que/less than.  Note in the following examples the order of the words as the comparison word does not come before the verb.  There may be some other words stuffed in before these words, but they still don’t come before the verb.

Here is the formula with an example:

Verb + comparison word + que + noun

Je lis autant que Jacques./I read as much as Jacques does.

Note how in English we use does but French doesn’t.

Chloé a autant de pièces que Frederick./ Chloé has as many coins as Frederick does.

Note in this example that pièces comes after the comparison word, but still before a (avoir).  The meaning still doesn’t change.  Also note that autant de with the de added before pièces whereas in the first example we weren’t stuffing extra nouns like pièces in between.

Type 4

This type is unlikely to be found on the exam but we’ll mention it here just the same.  This type uses the formula Il y a + que de because the phrase has more items (nouns) in it.  For example:

Il y a plus de canards que d’oies sur cet étang./ There are more ducks than geese on this pond.

Note how the Il y a plus de + noun + que + de + noun fits here.